LEWISTON — Bates College and the Bates Dance Festival will bring a widely acclaimed multimedia production of personal stories about the impacts of a deteriorating environment to Lewiston on April 27-28.
The innovation program, “red, black and GREEN: a blues” (rbGb), combines spoken word, music, dance and a dynamic stage design. It is driven by the idea that valuing your own life, and the life of your community, is the first step to valuing planet Earth.
Marc Bamuthi Joseph, one of America’s vital voices in performance and arts education, is the driving force behind “rbGb.”
Joseph appeared on the cover of Smithsonian Magazine in 2007 as one of America’s Top Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences. He was artistic director of the HBO documentary “Russell Simmons Presents Brave New Voices” and an inaugural recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, which annually recognizes 50 of the country’s greatest living artists.
“The production breaks new artistic ground and delivers a powerful message,” said Laura Faure, director of the Bates Dance Festival.
“This full-length performance piece is designed to jumpstart a conversation about environmental justice, social ecology and collective responsibility in the climate-change era,” she said.
The production consists of two sections. The first invites spectators onto the set to look into the windows of installations that represent four urban regions with stories and movements from these areas. In the second, audience members return to their seats and watch as the piece extends beyond conversation and focuses on central figures in Houston, New York, Chicago and Oakland.
Because of the exceptionally large space needed for the set construction, a venue other than a traditional theater was needed. Lewiston’s Memorial Armory met the production’s requirements. Seats will be placed close to the large set pieces and performers will be near the audience.
Stories for “rbGb” were developed from material gathered at a series of festivals held in four cities across the United States that use participatory arts and action to advance social and environmental justice in diverse and underserved communities.
Under Joseph’s artistic direction, these “Life is Living” events in Oakland, Calif., Harlem, Chicago and Houston have yielded residents’ testimony as dramatic source material — specifically, the voices of people often left out of discussions about “living green.”
Interviews, poems, films and murals from “Life is Living” have become words, dance and images that express the challenge of living green where violent crime and poor education are more of a threat than ecological crisis, and that reveal emerging definitions of environmentalism in these communities.
“rbGb” reunites seven artists from the acclaimed 2008 work “the break/s: a mixtape for stage.” Joseph, who received this year’s Alpert Award in theater, is writer-performer; Michael John Garces is director; Stacey Printz is choreographer. Other participants are drummer/beatboxer Tommy Shepherd; documentary filmmaker Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi; lighting designer James Clotfelter; and media designer David Szlasa.
Joseph is joined on-stage in the performance by Shepherd, dancer-actor Traci Tolmaire and vocalist-visual artist Theaster Gates, who also designed the set’s changeable stage installation of repurposed building materials and clay objects. The design is heightened by Jacobs-Fantauzzi’s vivid films and vibrant graffiti murals.
The San Francisco Chronicle described “rbGb” as “as smart and provocative as it is breathtakingly beautiful.”
“The movements for social change and environmental accountability are one and the same,” Joseph has said, adding that “focusing on steps to sustain the planet will ultimately force us to envision a pathway to sustaining humanity.”
Go and do
WHAT: “red, black and GREEN: a blues” multimedia production
WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 27-28. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m. for viewing of the show’s stage sets.
WHERE: Lewiston Memorial Armory, 65 Central Ave.
TICKETS: $20, $10 for seniors and students at batestickets.com
MORE INFO: Call 786-6135 or visit olinarts@bates.edu
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- Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s innovation program, “red, black and GREEN: a blues,” will be presented April 27-28 at Lewiston’s Memorial Armory. The first section of the production invites spectators onto the set to look into the windows of installations that represent four urban regions with stories and movements from these areas.
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